More than 20 tonnes of fishing nets have been collected from the bottom of the North Sea to be turned into clothes and carpets, paving the way for NGO Healthy Seas to extend its work to the Adriatic and Mediterranean seas.
Healthy Seas employed teams of scuba divers to recover the nets off the coast of Belgium and Holland this summer. The material was stored in warehouses near Rotterdam and this week will be sent to a plant in Slovenia to be turned into ECONYL yarns, a high-quality raw textile material that can be transformed into anything from carpet tiles to swimwear, underwear, high-tech clothing and sportswear.
Healthy Seas was founded in March by Aquafil, which started the ECONYL regeneration project, conservation group ECNC Land and Sea Group and Dutch manufacturer Star Sock. It aims to remove waste, in particular fishing nets, and other marine litter from the seas and oceans for the purpose of creating healthier seas and recycling marine litter.
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